30 Days Hath September 2016 | Day 25 | There was no revolution by Seamus Cashman

September 25, 2016

September 25, 2016

There was no revolution

by Seamus Cashman

…but

there was no revolution:

no one sang; and train tracks seemed

an ok place to sit by and wait;

– no guitar in sight; warm air

brimmed to overflow, melodic

cowling for our ears;

silence bursting to converse

to breathe an urgency,

a commotion.

But no one moved,

even as a train passed by

pulling itself through.

That seemed to suck all

in its after-draught,

and the silence

emptied.

At one edge of our universe

a solitary figure fell

to ground in dreamlike fugitive collapse,

crumpling slowly inward.

That disturbance left us

—each alone,

and without expectation.

Seamus Cashman lives in Dublin, Ireland. His fourth poetry volume is a book length ekphrastic epic in thirty-one Movements, The Sistine Gaze: I too begin with scaffolding (Salmon Poetry, 2015). He is an International emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute.